The grant, called the Next Gen Services Innovative Program, is administered by the Infocomm Development Authority. The program is making its second call for proposals. The first call for proposals were awarded to five companies including telcos and SMEs like SingTel and AsiaSoft.
The only prerequisite for grant applicants is that they should be businesses registered in Singapore. The proposals are selected based on six criteria: scale, deployment schedule, adoption rate, business model, degree of innovation and impact to the next gen broadband ecosystem. From the looks of it, the selection criteria for this grant looks straightforward enough, with the exception of last criteria, which is vague.
The IDA hasn’t set a maximum number of grants that will be awarded nor has it revealed the exact amount of funding the companies will receive. However, according to the IDA website, it will “co-fund relevant aspects of the initial cost to develop and deploy the Next Gen services or applications.” The closing date for this application is Nov 30.
The Next Gen Broadband, which enables high-speed internet access of up to 1 gigabyte per second, not only improves access to rich media but also gives rise to the development of interesting applications. These applications can be applied to various verticals to transform the way things are done. For a case in point, see Cisco’s healthcare presence system, that enables remote diagnosis with real-time data. Patients using this system can see images and listen to sounds from digital stethoscopes, streamlining consultations
Some of the examples from the first round of proposals for the NGSIP grant includes a “virtual mall” application, an online meeting network, and a platform-as-service application.
[Image credit: http://www.broadband-finder.co.uk/]
Link to full article
No comments:
Post a Comment